


Follow Your Arrow

by skylines



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3770941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylines/pseuds/skylines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz hates his new apartment.  It’s the size of a shoebox and the shower is so tiny that he can’t even do a full 360 without knocking into something.  There is, however, one upside to his new living quarters and his name is 4A.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow Your Arrow

Fitz hates his new apartment. It’s the size of a shoebox and the shower is so tiny that he can’t even do a full 360 without knocking into something. The food in the neighborhood is terrible; he can’t find a decent slice of pizza anywhere, which should be considered a crime in downtown Chicago. Whoever lives above him throws about three parties a week that last until the ass crack of dawn and keeps Fitz tossing and turning the entire night. His own apartment is an eyesore. Sure, it’s clean and organized, but the lumpy orange couch and the plastic lawn chairs don’t really scream _I’m a twenty six year old genius who can take care of myself_.

It’s really not his fault. Jemma had always been in charge of décor. But now Jemma and her excellent taste in furniture is in Japan doing STEM cell research and so out of pure desperation for a new place to live and quick, Fitz finds himself in this terrible apartment, miserable and without his best friend. There is, however, one upside to his new living quarters and his name is 4A. 4A lives across the hall from him and he’s quite possibly the most gorgeous man Fitz has ever had the chance to encounter. From what Fitz has seen of him, he knows three things about 4A.

1) Judging by the grease marks on his flannels and those wonderful _tight tight tight_ tank tops, 4A probably works in a garage.

2) 4A is freaking nice. Not only is he nice as in he’ll hold the door open for you, but when the elevator was down for a week, 4A carried all of Mrs. Diaz’s groceries to the 6th floor while she hung onto his arm, relentlessly thanking him and calling him a sweet boy.

3) This is Fitz’s personal favorite. 4A has the best smile. Fitz has only been lucky enough to receive that smile twice: once when he moved in two weeks ago and yesterday when he was late for work and tore out of his apartment like someone just lit a fire under his ass.

Anyways, 4A is perfection and Fitz considers himself lucky that he has such a fantastic view of this perfection. He obtains this fantastic view through the peephole of his door whenever he watches said perfection’s backside as he opens his door. Creepy? Very. But who cares? It’s harmless and people who look like 4A don’t go for awkward engineers that work all day in a lab.

“You never know,” Jemma proclaims. She’s not looking at the camera, but from the tone of her voice Fitz can tell that she’s frowning in disapproval.

“I’m just being realistic. Besides, there’s this girl who’s been at his apartment for the past few days. My god Jemma, she’s tall, blonde, gorgeous, and looks like she could probably kill me if I try to get near him. I saw her kiss him on the cheek yesterday,” Fitz says with a tiny pout.

Jemma finally looks up at him and one side of her mouth quirks up. “And was this kiss viewed through the infamous peephole, Leopold?”

“You know, you’re really not as funny as you think you are.”

He watches petulantly as he waits for her to get all of the giggles out. “Leo, she may just be a friend. Friends kiss each other on the cheek all the time. Why don’t you just go over there and introduce yourself? I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Fitz is just about to oppose that dumb suggestion when he hears shouting outside. Another thing he hates about this apartment is that the walls are paper-thin. With a quick peek through the peephole, he sees that the noise is coming from 4A’s unfairly gorgeous girlfriend and a man that Fitz has never seen before. It doesn’t look like it’ll be a physical fight but Fitz has been a nosy person since childhood so he runs to the laptop and tells Jemma he’ll be back and goes outside.

He folds his arms across his chest and tries to look as intimidating as possible. “Is there a problem here?” The pair automatically stops trying to scream over one another and turn to face him. The man’s face is unbothered and relaxed while 4A’s girlfriend’s eyes widen a bit.

“Hey mate, how’s it going? So you’re the guy who lives in 4B,” the man smirks and there’s something in his eyes that says he knows something that Fitz doesn’t.

“Hunter, stop it,” 4A’s girlfriend snaps and wow, Fitz never wants to be the reason why she’s angry. She turns to Fitz with a soft smile. “I’m Bobbi. We’re so sorry about disturbing you. Aren’t we Hunter?”

“Yeah, we’re terribly sorry,” Hunter says with a flippant tone. Fitz doesn’t really think he likes this Hunter guy all that much. Bobbi is definitely the better of the two, even though she’s dating Fitz’s dream man.

Hunter gets that same mischievous gleam in his eyes like earlier and sizes Fitz up. “So, 4B, what’s your name?”

“Leopold Fitz. People just call me Fitz.”

“With a name like Leopold, I can see why.” Yeah, Fitz definitely doesn’t like this guy. He smiles a little at Bobbi when she punches Hunter on the arm and judging by his wince, it looks like it hurt. “Don’t be an asshole. So Fitz, you just moved in, right? What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an engineer. I work in a lab,” Fitz says hesitantly. He really doesn’t want to like Bobbi, but she’s just so friendly and nice. And that’s probably why 4A likes her and why they’re going to get married and have extremely tall and beautiful children. Okay, so Fitz has always had the tendency to be a bit overdramatic.

“What’s going on here?”

_Oh god._

Fitz slowly turns to the source of the voice and 4A is standing in front of them looking very confused. Of course, Hunter jumps into action and waves him over. “Come here! We finally met the elusive 4B! His name is Fitz!”

“Hunter,” 4A’s voice is rough and Fitz melts into the ground a little. Fitz looks up when he feels 4A’s eyes on him and oh god, he’s about a head taller than him. This marks the third time Fitz’s has ever received a “4A smile”. He really should look into patenting this.

“So we finally meet. I’m Mack, pleased to meet you, Fitz.”

“Likewise,” Fitz murmurs.

4A, Mack, smiles at him again. “So what is everyone standing out here for?” Fitz looks around, Bobbi is silent and Hunter, surprisingly, looks ashamed. Mack presses, “Bobbi?”

“Hunter and I were arguing and Fitz came outside to see what was going on,” Bobbi explains. Mack sighs and fixes Hunter with a glare, “I thought I told you to fix it.”

“Why do you always assume it's my fault, mate?” Fitz has only known Hunter for all of five minutes and even he has to let out a scoff at that.

“Because your girlfriend has been sleeping on my bed for the past three days complaining about you and while she’s one of my best friends, I really want to get off the couch,” Mack explains in a tone like he’s talking to a five year old. He turns to Fitz with an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry about the two of them. They’re not always like this, I promise.”

Oh god. 4A is single. Mack is single and Bobbi is not his perfect girlfriend, but his best friend.

“Are you okay, Fitz?” Mack’s eyebrows furrow in concern as Fitz is still trying to find the correct words to piece together. “Yeah! Perfect. Excellent. Very good. Very, very good,” Fitz can’t find it in himself to stop listing synonyms and silently wills himself to stop talking.

“You’re a little flushed, Fitz. Maybe Mack can bring you in his apartment and get you a drink,” Bobbi offers, with a hint of a smile. “Hunter and I should get going.”

“Wait, what?”

“ _Now_.”

“Oh! Yeah, nice to meet you, mate. Hope to see you again soon!”

Fitz watches the bickering couple as they make their way into the waiting elevator. He turns to Mack, who’s still staring at him. “Did she just–”

“Try and set us up? Yeah, she did,” Mack chuckled. Fitz must still look incredibly confused because Mack laughs and explains, “I may have had to listen to Bobbi complain about whatever Hunter did wrong this time, but she also had to sit through me talking about the gorgeous new guy in 4B.”

“I’m not gorgeous,” Fitz looks down at his feet, feeling a blush coming on.

“Sure you are,” Mack shrugs like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “Now, what do you say, you want to come in for a drink?”

“I’d love to,” Fitz replies, a small smile tugging at his lips.  Wait, Jemma.  He gasps, “I’ll be right over, I need to do something first.”

“Take your time, 4B.”

Fitz rushes back into his apartment and is relieved to see Jemma still on the video chat, but she’s preoccupied.  “Jemma, Jemma, Jemma!”

“You’re back! What took so long?”

“4A’s name is Mack. His beautiful girlfriend is actually his beautiful best friend, Bobbi, and she’s actually dating Hunter, not 4A like I thought, but her and Hunter apparently had a fight so she was staying with Mack for a few days. But now, Bobbi and Hunter left and Mack invited me to his apartment for a drink.”

“Excellent, Leo! I told you, stepping out from behind the peephole and actually talking to him would work out!” Jemma’s smile is brilliant and she looks genuinely excited for Fitz.

They say their goodbyes and Fitz hurries out to meet 4A – no, _Mack_.

Fitz still hates his apartment. It’s still the size of a shoebox and there’s hardly enough room for one person in the shower, let alone two. The food in the neighborhood is still terrible and he still needs to go too far for a decent slice of pizza, but it turns out that Mack is an excellent cook and his chicken parmesan is to die for. Whoever lives above him still throws parties that last through the night, but Fitz just spends those nights in Mack’s apartment. His apartment is still an eyesore. The plastic lawn chairs are gone but he keeps the lumpy orange couch because that’s where Hunter sleeps when Bobbi kicks him out and Fitz finds great pleasure in watching Hunter grumble about his back the next morning.

It takes seven months and a sprained ankle from their shower activities for them to agree to move to a better place. Also, it is ridiculous to pay rent for two apartments when they spend almost every night together. Fitz grins widely when Mack brings it up and he jumps him right there in the kitchen.

It takes two more months after that to actually settle on a place. Fitz wanted a place that was close to the lab and Mack wanted a place that had open property near it to start his own garage. It takes them two days to move all their stuff in and four days to christen every room and surface in the apartment. Hunter doesn’t stop complaining about the smell for months.

It takes another three years before Fitz is looking down at Mack who’s down on one knee, smiling that 4A smile he fell in love with, and saying _yesyesyeysyes_ in front of that terrible apartment complex.

Their reception is beautiful and their friends give increasingly embarrassing speeches. Hunter tells everyone that if not for him and Bobbi fighting, Fitz and Mack would have never gotten together. Jemma flies in from Australia and recalls stories about the terrible apartment and the peephole that Fitz had become well acquainted with during the first two weeks of living there. Fitz hides his red face in Mack’s neck for the entirety of her speech.

And when they lay in bed in the honeymoon suite later that night, sleepy and sated, Fitz places a kiss on his husband’s chest and whispers, “I love you, 4A.”

“I love you too, 4B.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know. I like to lurk the FitzMack tag on tumblr and it feels like there's not a lot of people who write FitzMack, so here's one to add to the collection! Fitz and Mack are awesome and I really like their relationship, so I thought I'd write something fluffy because fluff is fun and I don't like being sad.
> 
> Fun Fact: the title is from Kacey Musgrave's song, 'Follow Your Arrow'. No reason behind it, other than the fact it was the song that came on when I was posting this.
> 
> I just started a tumblr (midnightsandskylines.tumblr.com) purely for writing, if you want to follow that. It has the total of 0 posts right now because apparently I really thought this thing through. If you want to talk to me or yell at me, go for it.
> 
> P.S. Just kidding about the yelling at me thing.


End file.
